They Screw You Up, Your Mum and Dad
by thewiseferret
Summary: Another of Envy's plans to get revenge on Hohenheim goes wrong, and has some unforseen consequences. A BBI anime based AU. Violence and swearing. No pairings. Concentrates on the 'Elric' family.
1. In which Envy is feeling reflective

_This is a BBI (Blue Bird's Illusion) AU based on the anime. It branches off from the anime at roughly episode 43 and is set roughly sixty years after that episode. This story involves Pride!Ed. It's also titled after and quotes (much later) a Larkin poem, 'This be the Verse', mostly because it seems to excuse everyone Ed was related to rather well. This concentrates on family relationships._

_This is actually the first piece of fanfic I've ever written so I hope it goes down well…….it's going on forever. I don't really want to say anymore about this AU because if I've done my job it'll all come clear sooner or later._

_I own nothing._

_Enjoy._

They fuck you up your Mum and Dad

In which Envy is feeling reflective

They stood too far away for the humans to see, watching the little girl playing with her dog in the long grass. It was always 'they' now, the two of them. Envy remembered a time when it had been 'them and us', a time when it had been 'us' or 'us seven' and even briefly a time when it had been 'I'.

The girl had brown hair, her mother's eyes, her mother's face for that matter and, much to Envy's amusement, showed every sign of not growing beyond an inch or two. She was almost twelve already for gods sakes, and she was shorter then he had been.

"Well?" Envy asked his companion. "What do you think?"

He got a blank stare for his trouble. "What do I- About what?"

"Her, dope."

His companion shifted and stared down at the girl with those blank eyes as if he had only just noticed her, which was entirely possible. Not expecting an answer Envy leaned across to rest his arm on his companion's shoulder.

"Don't think about it too hard, you might hurt yourself."

It had started with oddly enough with a victory celebration. Ed had died, Envy was celebrating, it was that simple. There had been food, from somewhere, red stones, and rather too much wine, which had resulted in the attentions of women, and men, that Envy would have preferred not to remember while sober. It should have been a good night, and for some reason it wasn't. He'd partied all the harder to try and make that one little doubt in the back of his mind shut up.

Because, yeah, Ed had been an annoying little brat of an alchemist, always getting in the way, messing up other people's plans. He'd looked like his father and Hohenheim had cared about him, and that should have been enough. Hell it had been enough to kill him, and enough to try and rub it in Pride's face when Envy had eventually staggered home. But Pride had just stared at him with those wide blank eyes, like he always did. He never got angry, never seemed hurt, or frustrated, or sad, or anything except confused. And even Envy couldn't taunt someone forever when they gave no response.

It had started slowly. Envy couldn't remember exactly when he'd stopped calling him squirt, shrimp, shorty and all those other names that had made Ed Elric explode into a fit of rage. There'd been a time when he'd called him Ed too, or Fullmetal, but that just seemed to confuse Pride all the more, because he could understand somehow that he was meant to be upset, but couldn't remember why. In the end Envy had given up and Ed had become Pride. Then, because the runt still didn't seem to remember or understand anything, dope, retard, idiot and a hundred other little names that Envy would have died before admitting were more due to affection then annoyance. Once or twice after they'd left, when they were alone, he'd even called him brother. It was an entirely pointless little gesture, since he doubted Pride could remember and it would have taken worse than wild horses and the dogs of Hell to drag the information out of Envy.

He told himself he'd left because Hohenheim had, again. It was easier to abandon the others with Hohenheim gone; it felt more like disbanding or striking out on his own then copying Greed. Greed, god that was lifetimes ago, but he made a note to remember it. Remember what happens when a homunculus stops doing what its creator wants and starts thinking on its own. Remember Greed. Remember Lust. Remember Wrath and Gluttony. Envy had gone off on his own, no reason, no orders, and not come back.

And why not? Hadn't he always wanted all those stupid human things that everyone else had? And god wasn't it easy to pass for human? He'd built or stolen lives and then abandoned them when he was bored of them, or when something better, richer, more interesting passed by. He flitted from place to place, pretending to be other people, men, women, young, old, powerful, poor, it didn't matter as long as it was someone else. It was odd, bland and almost comfortable, not having to be Envy all the time.

He'd found Pride because he'd run out of red stones. It was that simple. With all those dead homunculus bringing up red stones all over the place someone must have collected them up, and the military was as good a place to start as any. It had been stupidly easy to get in, so he'd had a look around. And found Pride. Pride stuck in a transmutation circle by a piece of Ed's old bones staring blankly ahead and probably wondering why he couldn't move. Retard. He'd almost left him there; after all if he was stupid enough to get caught it was hardly Envy's fault. But then again, why not?

Pride had started following him. He'd tried to make him stop, shouted at him, beat him up a few times, even to Envy's eternal shame, asked him nicely to piss off. But eventually Envy had given up, it was just like calling him shorty, there was no point, because whatever he said whatever he did, Pride would just stare at him with those blank eyes and then follow him again. The dope.

He'd toyed with the idea of going down Lust's route. He had enough red stones, and he could get human lives easily enough, all they really needed was an alchemist, a reasonably talented, unscrupulous alchemist and the world was full of those. But turning Pride back into a human wouldn't make him Ed. He'd asked Pride a couple of times, if he really didn't remember anything; he'd even tried telling him about Ed, the Fullmetal alchemist. Pride had frowned and said he thought he remembered being angry once when Envy had called him short, but he couldn't remember why. Ed was a dream he couldn't remember and Pride was as blank and passionless as Ed had been full of life.

"She looks……..like me." Pride said finally, smiling a little at having made the connection.

"Course she does retard, she's your sister." Envy said smirking as he watched Pride's face fade back to that familiar confusion. "She's _his_ daughter."

Pride looked blank.

"Hohenheim's dope, she's Hohenheim's daughter. He found another woman, after all that bullshit about being in love with your mother. That would make her your sister." Envy watched carefully, but Pride's face still looked as blank as a doll's, not that he'd expected anything more.

"Oh." Pride said.

"We're going to take her with us."

"Why?" Pride asked.

Envy grinned. "Dontcha think a girl should know her older brothers?"

Pride looked confused. "But-why?"

"Why the hell not?"


	2. The problem with hostages

_I own nothing. I blame Mich she told me to keep writing this and it spawned. _

In which hostage keeping does not go as planned

Envy had an unfortunate habit of not thinking things through properly. He would latch onto an idea that appealed as it happened to be passing and jump to carry it out without stopping to think about the consequences. For example if he had thought about it he probably would have realised that taking a young human hostage generally involved keeping them alive. As it happened Envy hadn't thought quite that far ahead, and as a result had made a few unfortunate oversights. The first involved the fact that humans actually ate food, and Envy hadn't bothered to acquire any. The second was that since taking Hohenheim's daughter hostage involved keeping her alive, and she knew this as well as Envy, all of Envy's threats were null and void.

The third oversight was not precisely Envy's fault but could possibly have been avoided with a little foresight and planning, things which he conspicuously lacked. The girl, as it happened, was an alchemist. A well trained talented alchemist with a regrettable side in opening locks. She also had an unfortunately good left hook, and more then passable aim. And someone had made the mistake of locking her in a room with a 4B pencil. As a result the first week was punctuated by a mix of flashing alchemic light, minor scuffles, swearing and loud complaints. Sometime around the second day she had heard the name Hohenheim and decided that they wanted some sort of ransom from her father. Then she started making demands.

Much later they would look back at those two weeks and laugh. At least _she_ would laugh, Pride would laugh and Envy would grudgingly admit that if he'd been in that position he would have tried to make life as miserable as possible for his captors too. A talent for raising Cain seemed to be a dominant trait from their father's side and Susie Hurst seemed to take after her father after all. Envy found himself remembering why he'd hated Ed so much. Then again Ed had never demanded make up and a comb. He hadn't tried, even in the most extreme fits of boredom, to untangle the knots from Envy's mop of hair either. That had happened sometime near the end of the first week, after they'd finally managed to confiscate her pencil. There had probably been a reason why Susie had thought it would be a good idea to attach herself to Envy's back and start hacking at his hair with a comb, she just happened to be unable to explain it to anyone else.

A penchant for trouble and a talent for alchemy were not the only things Hohenheim had thought to pass on. Susie was as stubborn and as smart as Ed had been and as vicious as Envy. Hostage keeping metamorphosised into rather long periods of boredom interspersed with short periods of panicked violent activity.

"That little _bitch!_ I should skin her alive and nail her guts to the fucking wall!" Envy ranted storming out for the sixth time that day.

Pride watched him go with blank eyes.

"You watch her!" Envy growled.

Pride shrugged and wandered down to Susie's room. The keys clattered and his sister looked up to glare at him as he cautiously poked his head through.

"You won't find Dad, no one knows where he is and he's not going to pay. I want to go home." She folded her arms in a final sort of way.

Pride shrugged and eased his way into the room shutting the door gently behind him.

"Didn't you hear me?! I said you're not going to get any money!"

Pride blinked and in a moment of semi clarity replied. "Money?"

Susie gritted her teeth; she found Pride immensely frustrating.

"But….but- butwedon't want money-" He continued, his confused look wandering round the room before settling on Susie.

"Oh so you go round snatching girls for fun huh?" She said sarcastically.

Pride considered this. "No…..No-I don't-Idon'tthinkso-"

She snorted. "You don't even know? Typical-"

"No…..I…..Envy said-"

"The guy with hair like a spider plant on growth hormone?" She interrupted.

Pride either ignored her or didn't hear her. "Envy said," He repeated carefully. "That it was only-that Father would use you to go after us……sooner or later-and it would-would get under his skin……..only I can't remember what that means-"

"You're keeping me here to annoy your father?!" Susie took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly, not that it mattered Pride didn't seem to be able to tell the difference. "Well, I don't know your father and he doesn't know me, so you can let me go home now."

He frowned. "You do."

"Do what?"

Pride blinked.

She sighed. "Go on then, how do I know your father?! Surprise me!"

"He…….." Pride trailed off.

Susie attempted to stifle a groan of frustration and almost choked. "What's his name?"

"Who?"

"What-" She said carefully. "Is-Your-Father's-Name?"

Pride turned, his eyes almost focusing and smiled a wide easy grin. "van Hohenheim."

"WHAT!"

Pride's gaze slipped unfocused to the floor. Susie spent the next hour or so shouting insults and questions at him, making demands. But like Envy she found Pride entirely unresponsive and after a while when her voice was hoarse and he still hadn't glanced up from the floor she lapsed into silence.

-

Envy walked through the streets of Central valiantly resisting the urge to kill someone. It was rapidly becoming obvious that this had been another mistake, and not the 'releasing-Pride' kind of mistake either. The girl was a pain, not being able to kill her made that a more pressing issue, but the worst of it was that _he_ didn't seem to have noticed. Two weeks and there hadn't been the slightest hint that-what? That he cared about his daughter? That was probably too much to ask from the bastard, after all this was the man who had to date brought two out of a half dozen sons back as homunculi and had at least one of them murdered in the first place. Envy grimaced; it was all mutating into a horrendous catch 22. If he let the kid go he was practically inviting the old man to set her up as another alchemic thorn in his side. If he killed her he lost the advantage. Living with her was insufferable but the longer Envy kept her alive the more likely it became that _he_ would find out and take an interest, if only as a point of pride.

The problem was gradually driving Envy insane. Relatively. He couldn't even kill someone to loosen up, because of course the higher the miscellaneous body-count in the area the more likely it became that _he_ would track them down.

Red stones, he decided abruptly, he needed red stones. A decent power rush would do in place of random slaughter. He would steal them from the military again, why not? He could have done with a challenge that didn't involve wrestling pencils from pint-sized alchemists. Not that it had been much of a challenge the last time around. The beauty of it was that with all the trouble in the South flaring up again no one outside the military would ever hear there'd been a break in. A broad toothy smile crept over his face.

The streets in the area were empty, which was probably one of the reasons why they picked this area. There was a brief flash of alchemic light and a young, rather dashing, military officer picked his way out of an alley towards the guards at the warehouse gate. Of course there was absolutely no way to tell it was Envy; unless you'd seen that smile before.

-

Pride was sure that something was wrong; the trouble was he couldn't remember what. The problem danced around the edge of his brain, tantalising him and slipping away. Every time he felt himself getting close something caught his attention, caught his eyes. Then suddenly he'd find himself paying rapt attention to the fifty different things a mote of dust in the air could do next and which was the most likely. That seemed to always be the way, he'd be struggling desperately to think or remember something that would never come because the world was always shifting and his eyes were always watching how.

So he hadn't noticed that it was morning, or that Susie was talking to him, her voice gradually rising as he kept staring blankly off into space. He didn't even notice when she stopped talking as she realised that he wasn't ignoring her, he actually couldn't hear what she said. He didn't notice when she got to her feet and walked cautiously towards him, careful not to block the bit of wall he was looking at. He didn't notice she was beside him until Susie punched.

Pride crumpled to the floor, his mouth open in surprise. And his eyes ratcheted into focus. _She's going to kick me in the ribs._ Pride twisted, dodging a kick that hadn't even happened yet and scrambled to his feet. It was, odd, seeing like this, the blur of the world, all the ifs and may-bes had shrunk down to Susie Hurst leaving everything else clear. He didn't have time to stop and admire the finally static world. She punched, kicked and scratched at Pride but he ducked and swerved away effortlessly. There was a comforting rhythm to it, swaying away from her blows.

Pride watched calmly as she struck out again and again only to miss. She was getting upset; he noticed and found that he didn't want to make her upset. As nice as it was, for the world and thoughts to focus down to one thing, this had gone too far. He waited for an opening, then reached out and put a hand on her stomach. He pushed her gently back and watched, his eyes growing dull again as she staggered back off balance.

They stared at each other for a while. Susie was sweating and panting. Pride was as blank and serene as ever.

"Envy." He said suddenly.

"What?" Susie snapped.

"Envy…….He didn't-didn't come back."

-


	3. Family, damn it

_I own nothing. _

_Mercury poisoning is pretty nasty and research for this turned up a horrible case a couple of years ago where vaccines for third world children were being preserved using a mercury compound. Two things for those that like the fanon….thermometers and/or swallowing mercury doesn't give you mercury poisoning. Mercury poisoning is a slow, drawn out, horrible way to go, with roughly every organ in your body giving out and your personality and mental faculties getting a complete re-write in the process……Sorry, rant over. _

In which there is more focus on familiar relations then the protagonists would like

Envy probably should have been scared; instead he was incredibly pissed off. If he'd been concentrating on breaking in instead of letting his mind wander to that incredibly annoying shrimp of an alchemist, he might not have got into this mess. He would have been pacing and hammering on the door if he hadn't felt so sick.

When had they started using alchemy as part of their security here? When for that matter had they managed to make alchemical traps that set themselves off automatically when the security cameras and motion sensors picked up on illegal entrances? Envy considered this, and came to the conclusion that it was probably sometime shortly after his last visit.

It wasn't really the sickness that bothered him, or that he felt so weak that he didn't think he could stand up straight without fainting. It was that they'd just left him. Dumped him in a Flammel array and left him, like he wasn't a threat anymore. Like he was nothing to worry about. They hadn't even taken the red stones he'd coughed up on the floor. Wasn't that a sadistic torment? Keeping all those little red promises of health and strength right there to tempt him into eating them for the few blissful seconds of normality before the array made him choke them up again.

He tried to tell himself he wasn't worried, wasn't scared. They hadn't tried to kill him yet after all, and they couldn't keep him here forever, he could wait. Yeah, right. Envy tried to remember how long Greed had spent in Lab 5; it was a long time anyway, even for someone who was over five hundred years, to be alone in the dark. Envy shivered. Alone in the dark, may be for hundreds of years if they really had forgotten about him. He curled up into a foetal position in the middle of the array, staring at the wall.

_Dad, if you decided you wanted me after all, or even if you just want me to stop hating you so much, now would be a really great time to show up._

_-_

The boy was, frantic was not the right word. His eyes had glazed over again after his momentary lapse with sanity. He wandered in and out again and again asking if she'd seen Envy.

Susie Hurst was a practical girl; the smart one was gone which left a boy who obviously didn't have a clue what was going on. Alright so he was good at fighting but he was lost without the older one. She'd heard him pacing back and forth for hours now; she was starting to suspect that he was-how did her Nan put it?-not all there. He hadn't checked on her, he hadn't locked the door; he hadn't given her anything to eat all day. She stopped. He hadn't locked the door.

She scrambled to her feet and rushed to the door. She stopped just in front of it, giving it a gentle push with her fingertips. It eased open on to an empty corridor. She quickly glanced both ways, picked a direction and tried to creep away as quietly as her increasingly fast jog would let her. It was strange really she'd been reasonably calm in the cell, well fuming, hopping, bright red, blood pressure escalating exponentially, furious anyway, now she was out and she was scared. So of course in the true tradition of the Law of Sodd and b-horror movies everywhere she ran straight into Pride. She didn't need a good imagination to realise that this was the end of the line, the boy could have easily beaten her to a pulp in the cell and now he had an excuse to. Susie set her face to the patented Elric scowl and raised her fists.

"Where's Envy?" Pride's blank eyes swung straight over her as he staggered past.

Susie stared after him, he must have been walking round the building for hours, since-since he'd fought her and realised the other one was gone.

"Envy!"

She jogged after the homunculus and found him lurching out of the room she'd been locked in for the past-however long it had been. Pride looked up, and for a moment he stared at her with those blank eyes.

"Do you know……..where……..Envy-" His lip wobbled. "He said he'd come back-he said-he said-"

Without meaning to Susie took a step towards him.

"He-he didn't come back………He always comes back……..always….."

If she'd stopped to think she probably would have backed away, after all he had kidnapped her. Instead she found herself with her arm around her brother for the first time in her life, making soft shushing noises at him.

"Shhh, it's ok. You're gonna be ok. We'll find him. It'll be ok."

Susie steered him slowly through the building and out. She took a few minutes to try and recognise the city she'd arrived in. When she didn't she wandered in a direction that she thought might be vaguely towards the centre of the city. It took a good hour and a half, even though Susie did ask for directions six times, but eventually the two of them arrived at the train station.

Pride stirred from his place at her shoulder. His golden eyes fritzed in and out of focus. "Where are we going?"

"We're getting a ticket South, to Dublith."

"Is Envy there?"

"No." Susie replied firmly, trying to suppress her sympathy now that her common sense had had time to kick in. "We're going to see my Aunts."

"Oh."

"They'll know what to do." She reassured him. "Now you just remember that if anyone asks you're my brother and we're going home alright?"

A familiar expression of confusion settled on Pride's face. "But I am." He murmured.

-

His feet were cold, they were always cold, at least he thought they were it was so hard to tell. His head hurt, it spun, like he was standing on a cliff when he was lying flat on the ground. The ground, the floor, it was stone, or it might have been. He tried to wipe the blood away from his mouth, but may be his hand was shaking too much. His stomach heaved again and he squirmed, groaning as the bones in his back ground together. And then the itching started again.

He moaned and shifted to scratch. Then he remembered that he couldn't move his arms. He shrieked tugging against the restraints until it felt like every joint in his arms had popped out. He just wanted to scratch and he couldn't even do that because they'd-he felt angry again. It came and went suddenly with no reason to it, anger and despondency, fear, the screams from the other rooms, and he couldn't sleep. He could never sleep now; he heard the screaming in his dreams and woke up sweating. He swore, shouting as loudly as his useless weak lungs would let him and kicked at the wall. He pushed at the bar between his elbows, twisting his wrists in the block that held them apart even though they were already raw. He broke off coughing, it felt wet and like one of his ulcers had popped. That metal taste…….

He rolled on to his shoulder, putting his feet against the wall and pushed, rubbing his arm against the floor. The stone tore all the scabs off and it hurt but it itched, but it hurt.

Five hundred years away the creature that was once Hohenheim's son woke up shivering in a Flammel array. It took a minute for Envy to convince himself that he wasn't tied up, he wasn't in hospital, he wasn't dying of mercury poisoning anymore. He rolled over to stare at the ceiling and try to convince himself that he could get back to sleep.

It was dark in the cell, so no one would have been able to see the changes that he'd fallen asleep with a head of coarse dark hair, and woken up with fine curling strands of blond mixed in. No one would have seen Hohenheim's gold mix with homunculus violet in his eyes. Not that anybody would have cared.

-


	4. Which is rather too full of Aunts

_I own nothing. References to James Bond and while I'm on the subject there will probably be references to the Hustle series in future chapters. Because they rock. Also appologies if I spelt any of the FMA countries wrong, I tried to double check them._

Which is rather too full of Aunts

There was no warning flash of light on his side of the wall; it just caved in, tons of concrete dispersing into dust. It was so bright in the corridor outside, and suddenly it was so loud as well. Someone was yelling, but for what seemed like a long time it was just noise.

"He's not moving." A voice he didn't recognise snapped.

And something was in the light. It tramped over the array, making Envy wince with every loud jarring step. It stooped, grasping what was left of his coarse dark hair and tugging. The shock of it, the sudden….sensation reminded him to breathe again. They dragged him blinking and gasping into the light.

"Envy!"

Pride, it was Pride.

"He doesn't look much like your description." The woman standing over him observed, letting go of his hair. "Get him up."

"But he doesn't-doesn't always look like……that." Pride whispered.

There were three of them, two women-at least he thought there were two but they were about the same height, southerners with that little kick of Aerugese and they were both wearing the sort of unnecessary amount of black that suggested alchemist amateurs. It could have been double vision of course. But their actual numbers didn't change the fact that his ass was being saved by bloody alchemists who'd decided to take up breaking into military property on a whim. And his retard brother of course. He choked. It was a while before he realised that it would probably normally have come out as laughter.

_I've finally lost it._

"Martha this isn't going to hold back a special forces unit forever!"

_Brilliant, splendid, five hundred years and a few measly weeks in a dark room and I'm completely cracked! I'm going to die. I always knew it would be Elric's bloody fault-_

"Get him up!" The alchemist snapped again.

Envy made a token effort to stand up on his own and gave up half way through the attempt. But Pride grabbed his arm with unnatural speed and hoisted him up.

_Wonderful, as long as those special forces units advance at a leisurely pace and have all the shooting skills of the bad guys in a Bond book we'll all be fine._

The alchemists backed slowly down the corridor until they were either side of Pride.

"You remember how to get out of here boy?"

"Yes Aunt Agatha."

"You follow Martha-"

"Yes Aunt Agatha."

"Well get going then! Chop-chop!"

_I am going to die._

_-_

It was the first time in fifty years Envy had been a passenger in a car. The experience didn't endear them to him. Something about being thrown onto the floor of an already moving vehicle and the subsequent, apparently necessary, speeding through small winding back roads wasn't particularly appealing. There seemed to suddenly be an awful lot of narrow twisting roads through villages and suburbs on the way south. The journey probably didn't last days, but it certainly seemed as though it did with the rather worrying sounds of pursuit behind them doing their best to raise Envy's blood pressure. The Flammel array was the only reason Envy wasn't extremely sick over the floor, and probably the only reason he was quiet.

_I am NEVER getting in one of these again…..assuming I live that long._

Eventually the chase died away and the car settled to a more leisurely pace through the south-west countryside.

_Probably a field, and those bumps must have been cows or something-I swear these things got suspension fifty years ago….._

And then they stopped.

_Oh hell._

Pride lifted him up and pulled him out into the open air. There were a few minutes of peace as he was guided from the drive up the steps and into the house. Long enough for him to notice that he could barely see the other houses in the village except as vague dots of light somewhere far to the left. Then he was hustled inside and propped up on the sofa.

_I'm spending my final moments in a tartan armchair; this had better be a hallucination…_

One of the alchemists, Agatha, Martha, he couldn't tell the difference, had appeared in front of him and deposited a large black bag on the arm of the chair. She shone a light in his eye.

"Well his pupils are responding normally." She observed. "But he looks as though he was given a tranquiliser."

_Absolute friggin genius. Where do they get these identical freaks from? Are they mail order, medical-jargon optional?_

Agatha put the torch away and pressed a thumb into Envy's wrist. Her lips moved as she counted his pulse. They really were almost identical, the same height, the same build, the same dark hair and lighter skin, that Dublith tweak in the cheekbones, the thin lips. There were alchemic arrays drawn all over their skin in what looked like orange felt pen.

"He has a pulse," She announced without much confidence. "It's erratic but-what do you want boy?"

Pride gulped and offered Agatha a glass of water. She stared at it for a moment then took it thoughtfully. He suddenly realised exactly how long it had been since he'd last had a drink. Agatha's smile when she noticed his eyes following the glass wasn't quite malicious, but it was certainly close. Carefully by degrees she lifted the glass to the homunculus' lips and tilted it just enough to give him a small spluttering sip.

"Well," Martha snapped "What have you got to say for yourself?"

"You, Are the worst driver I have ever met." Envy whispered hoarsely.

A particularly unusual array on Martha's fingertip glowed ominously. "Do you have a good reason why we shouldn't kill you?"

Envy considered this. "My wit and charming personality?" He suggested hopefully.

"He might be delirious." Agatha said quickly.

"He's hallucinating?"

"No, definitely the worst driver-"

"Not exactly, I'm going to sedate him." She rummaged briefly in her bag and produced a hypodermic and a small bottle. "Now try to stay calm, this won't hurt-"

In Envy's experience those words were usually a good indication that it was time to panic. Usually this would have resulted in a small yet significant bloodbath and general destruction of property in the immediately surrounding area, however in his current circumstances Envy found he had to……downscale somewhat. He flailed wildly for a few minutes, scoring a few blows more by luck then design, then everything faded away.

_-_

They put him in the spare room with an IV as Agatha seemed to think he was dehydrated even though he wasn't showing any serious symptoms. They took it in turns watching him. For the most part that meant shooing Susie away and telling the boy he'd be more use doing chores then moping in a calm, firm voice. He slept soundly for the most part.

He woke up at nine thirty seven; Martha noted the time and stared at her palms for a moment wondering which array to use. The boy sat up slowly rubbing his head. Martha Hurst reached casually for the old standard issue pistol her father had kept since the second Ishbalan war. Martha was not a fantastic shot, but the pistol was in working order, loaded and he was only a few meters away at most. He rubbed at the scratches on his arms and prodded at the needle.

"Whas 'is?"

"An IV." Martha answered shortly.

_What's that in Amestrian?_

"I wouldn't try that-"

Envy's legs buckled as he tried to get up, but he didn't collapse into a heap on the floor, which had to be a plus. And it was only a few steps, four at most. Eight steps, there and back. He could make eight steps. He gripped the bed frame, pulled himself up and tottered towards the dresser pulling the IV over behind him.

Martha watched slightly incredulously as the boy staggered to the dresser, leaning heavily on it and staring intently into the mirror. Then there was a flash of alchemic light.

Martha dropped the gun.

The boy had changed, he was taller and slimmer, his hair had become longer, dark and coarse. He looked, effeminate, more symmetric, and slightly unearthly. Or perhaps that was just the effect of having seen his appearance change so suddenly and-how- Even his clothes had changed, to some sort of strange black outfit that in Martha's opinion left far too much flesh exposed. And just like that he was tottering off back towards the bed, typical teenager-

"How did you do that?!" Martha demanded getting to her feet unnecessarily dramatically.

"I dunno." Envy groaned falling into a heap on the bed and fighting briefly with the knotted duvet.

"What are you?!"

"Homunculus." Envy muttered giving up on the duvet and putting his hands over his ears.

"A what?!"

"Can I sleep?" He moaned.

Martha bent to pick up the revolver. Envy groaned; it was going to be a very long day.

"Fine," He shifted so that slightly less of his hair was over his face. "You'd better call my retard brother, this is gonna take a while."

-


	5. In which there is an explaination

_Apologies for this being so late, and so short. And I still don't own FMA._

In which there are explanations, of sorts

Envy did most of the talking, at varying volumes, levels of clarity and with a seasoning of interesting hand gestures. Martha at least was not listening. About a minute in she'd decided that body alchemy on that scale was impossible and had since been trying to prove it on the back of a shopping list.

Eventually Envy ran out of steam and the room fell into an awkward silence punctuated by Martha's half-muttered formulas.

"So," Agatha began in a tone of voice that made it clear that she was speaking to particularly slow children. "You kidnapped my niece on the off chance that it would attract her father's attention and you're angry at him because he created you?"

Envy started to protest but Martha interrupted him. "Susanna Jane Hurst it's rude to listen at keyholes either go downstairs or come in."

The young alchemist shuffled sheepishly inside trying very very hard to suppress the kind of grin that would have clearly shown her Elric heritage.

"You're dead?! That's so cool!"

Envy groaned and buried his head in his hands.

_Why isn't opium legal anymore? Laudanum, chloroform, alcohol, anything…they had the right bloody idea two hundred years ago when they drugged these little-_

In a frankly unadvisable show of enthusiasm Susie climbed onto the end of the bed and was openly staring.

"How does that work? How come you don't rot? Aunt Martha isn't that-"

"Impossible, yes." She replied coldly.

"Wow," The girl enthused creeping closer. Before Envy could stop her she'd picked up his foot and was taking an entirely disproportionate interest in bending his ankle.

"What THE-HEY! STOP THAT! GET OFF!!" He yelled kicking out randomly and mostly ineffectually. Something about the lack of red stones, food and water seemed to have reduced the homunculus from his usual killing-machine form. "LET GO!!! OW!! YOU LITTLE-"

Martha's fist landed on his head with more force then was strictly necessary. "Language!"

"Who are you my mother?! OW! OW! SHI-OW!!!!"

"Stop hitting the boy Martha, it's against the-"

"So was breaking him out of a military base!" She interrupted, giving him another whack.

For the sake of his head Envy bit his tongue.

_What is it about alchemists and PERSONAL SPACE?! Damned annoying midget_-

The Aunts glared at each other for a minute or so before Martha silently surrendered.

"Let go of his foot Susanna."

"But-"

"Susanna-"

"Yes Aunt Martha."

There was a short silence as Susie tried to remember how to behave, Envy attempted to protect his limbs from his extended family and the Aunts squared up for the next round of their interrogation.

"So," Agatha picked up again.

"So." Envy replied antagonistically.

"I assume that being a morally bankrupt product of body alchemy-"

"Chimera are _products of body alchemy-_" Envy corrected snottily.

"Fine, _homunculus,_" She took a deep breath, glancing briefly at Susie and wondering how to phrase this without mentioning the child's father. "This," She gestured sweepingly at Susie, Pride and Envy. "Can't be because of human taboos, because of bad science-"

"Science that doesn't help people is no science at all!" Pride declared.

"What?!" Envy twisted trying to get up and pulled the IV over again.

Pride shook his head violently his eyes clouding over.

"What did you say?!"

"I-I-I don't-"

"Well THINK dope, what did you just say?!"

"I don't know!"

"It's a simple question," Envy's voice dropped dangerously. "What did you say you short retarded Full-Metal knock off-OW! STOP hitting me!!!"

"Don't bully him then." Martha said unrepentant. "And answer the question."

"It was something-something-" Pride trailed off taking a few steps back and turning to face the wall. "A suit of armour……..Al! It was Al-"

"Alphonse is dead." Envy stated.

"I-I know….I think. He said it-yes Al said it when we were-"

"When Ed was." Envy corrected.

"WhenEdwas," Pride agreed then trailed off. He was silent for a minute staring at the wall then whirled round with a wide Elric grin. "Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is Alchemy's First Law of Equivalent Exchange." He quoted.

"Congratulations you've remembered something completely useless." Envy observed sarcastically.

"Alchemy is not useless!" Susie interrupted heatedly.

"It is if he can't use it." Envy snapped.

"It is not!"

"Is too-"

"Is not!"

"Is-OW!"

"Stop that." Agatha ordered. "If you don't have anything useful to say then be quiet."

"We may as well gag him then." Martha muttered. "Didn't anyone teach you to respect your elders boy?"

"I'm five hundred years old you stupid human-OW!"

"Stop being so rude." Agatha demanded.

"And don't lie." Martha added, hitting him again for good measure.

"Lie?" Pride asked. "But-but-he's not-I think….but he's older than me anyway…."

"How old are you?" Susie wondered aloud.

"Sixty three…….and a half…….I think-"

Martha snorted. "You're fourteen if you're a day."

"And he can't possibly be five hundred years old-" Agatha began.

"Because that would be impossible," Martha added.

"And Hohenheim couldn't have created you if you were that old," Agatha continued.

"Because he can't be past fifty," Martha pointed out.

"And humans don't live that long." Agatha finished.

"They can," Envy informed them through gritted teeth. "If they have a philosopher's stone."

"The philosopher's stone's a myth." Martha snapped turning to her sister for support.

Agatha shook her head. "So are homunculi. So is alchemy on a living body to change its composition, which is essentially what you saw him do." She paused for a moment.

"I need to look at my books. Susanna you were supposed to be doing the dishes, you, boy, you can help her." She ordered, sweeping Pride and Susie out of the room in front of her. "Make sure he doesn't go anywhere Martha." She called over her shoulder.

"HEY! What's she going to-"

Martha placed her forearm on the wall. There was a flash of alchemical light, closely followed by the sound of Envy swearing as he found himself strapped down to the bed-frame.

-


	6. Objections to Envy's behaviour

In which the natural order is somewhat restored and several Ladies object to Envy's behaviour

It took a much shorter time than usual for Envy's string of obscenities to die down. He blamed the fact that all his fluids currently seemed to be entering his body through a plastic tube shoved into his arm and a chronic lack of throat sweets. This had two main disadvantages. The first was his growing frustration at being unable to fully inform the Aunts exactly how intensely he disliked them, their cooking, their hospitality, and the fact he was tied to one of their beds. The second was that now he had nothing to do.

The sight of the wall opposite him quickly became the very definition of mind-numbing soul-destroying boredom. It didn't even have bricks he could count. So he was actually quite pleased when Susie poked her head around the door, no matter how short and annoying she was. At least she was something to distract him.

"Hey ummmm," She began awkwardly.

"Have you shrunk since the last time I saw you?" He asked condescendingly.

"WHO ARE YOU CALLING SHORT?!"

Envy grinned, oh he'd missed this. "Are you still there? I can't see you over the side of the bed pipsqueak-"

"STOP CALLING ME SHORT YOU-"

"Or you'll what?" Envy interrupted. "Can you even reach me from down there?"

Susie hit him. Somehow this wasn't as fun when the Elric involved could punch him and he couldn't even block the blow. Hurst, he corrected himself, her surname was Hurst not Elric, after all she was a bastard like him.

"What do you want pipsqueak?" He sighed.

"STOP CALLING ME-"

"Susie." Envy corrected through gritted teeth.

"Call me short again and I'll hit you so hard-"

"Did you want something?"

Susie shrugged and started fiddling with her jacket. She stared at Envy.

"You don't look much like Dad you know, you're really skinny and you got this weird hair that kinda-" She made an expansive hand gesture that resembled a mime of her head exploding. "And your eyes are this weird shape sorta like Areugese but not-"

"And you look like a pickup truck decided to ram into your nose." Envy replied pleasantly.

"Watch it!" Susie ordered waving a fist at him threateningly.

Envy managed to repress the urge to say 'Or what?' long enough for his half-sister to continue.

"What's he like?"

The homunculus scowled. "Who?"

_If I could change my arm into a sword then-owowowowow, ok that hurts, may be not….May be it'll go away, even short pathetic little alchemist-wanna-be humans have better things to do then…..actually….Why is it always too much to hope that these horrible little humans have lives, hobbies, anything to do that isn't tormenting me?_

"Dad," Susie expanded, apparently under the illusion that Envy didn't know who she was talking about and wasn't just being his usual hostile self. "What's he like?"

_Perhaps if I glare at her enough she'll spontaneously combust? _

"He's a bastard." Envy snarled.

_Understatement of the fricking century._

"And?"

"And what?"

"You can't just say that and not give a reason! That's stupid!"

"He's a fucking bastard! That's a reason!" Envy protested.

"It is NOT!"

"It is TOO!"

"It is NOT!" Susie yelled "He can't be THAT bad if he made you! WELL?!"

"Do you know how to make a homunculus child?" Envy asked, his tone growing worryingly quiet. "Seventy pints of water, fifty pounds of coal, eight pints of amun salt, three pounds of chalk, one and a half pounds of phosphorus, half a pound of salt, a quarter of a pound of salt peter, a handful of sulphur, a tablespoon of fluorspar, a teaspoon of iron fucking filings, and a pinch of sand. What does _that_ make _alchemist_?"

"I don't-"

"A human body," The homunculus growled. "We are what happens when _you_ try to recreate someone, and you're always _so_ disappointed when we aren't who you want, aren't human, aren't what you want. We are replacements and that's never fucking good enough. Do you have any idea what it feels like having your organs growing outside of your skin and _not dying_?"

"I-"

"Get out."

Susie took a step backwards away from the bed, but apparently it wasn't quick enough.

"PISS OFF!" He screamed, bearing sharp shark-like homunculus teeth.

She ran.

-

Envy had an hour or so to contemplate the bedroom wall again before….

The door seemed to slam open, which really shouldn't have been physically possible. Martha stormed in wielding what looked on first inspection to be a handbag but was clearly secretly some sort of diabolical death weapon from the manner in which she was holding it.

"WHAT DID YOU SAY TO MY NEICE?!"

_And it starts again-I wonder if I'll have a bruise on the top of my head for the rest of my life? Probably….all six days of it._

"You're going to hit me anyway," He surmised. "And you've got rocks in that bag haven't you?"

The handbag landed with a satisfying thump on the top of Envy's head. It would have split a human's head open like a watermelon; Envy gave silent thanks for an exceptionally hard skull.

_Not rocks, sodding lumps of lead. POINTY sodding lumps of lead. Six days might be a little optimistic….more like six hours…..minutes….seconds……I wonder if I can bite her?_

Martha waited for the swearing and coughing to die down.

"What. Did. You. Say. To my Niece?" She asked again.

"Well she's obviously told you or you wouldn't be-" Envy struggled with his restraints in a vain attempt to protect his skull. "-hitting me."

"What did you tell her?!"

"The truth!" The homunculus protested, dodging the handbag by a knot of hair.

"You did not! You were feeding her horror stories!"

"Was not!"

"Organs growing outside skin?! That is _impossible_ now I don't know who you think you are _boy_ but you have no right to-"

Envy winced instinctively; he may only have been in the house for a relatively short period of time but the connection between _that tone of voice_ and immediate pain had already been deeply ingrained. It didn't come. He opened one eye cautiously. Agatha was standing calmly in the doorway thumbing through a book and if The Aunts were communicating it was obviously either well into the ultra-sound or on some sort of psychic level only accessible to them.

_Oh god, both of them….can a life expectancy get shorter then seconds?_

After a minute or two of silent nodding, shaking and reading over each other's shoulders Agatha remembered the homunculus.

"You, boy do you recognise this array?" She demanded shoving a smudged piece of paper an inch in front of Envy's nose.

"Should I?" He replied sarcastically.

"Do you know how you were made?"

"Oh so you've decided I exist have you?"

"How was the array constructed?" Agatha pressed.

"How the hell should I know? I," Envy stated in far too smug a tone. "Am not an alchemist."

"And you know nothing about alchemy I suppose?"

"Why should I?"

Agatha sighed. The Aunts shared a look and on some silent signal left the room, gently shutting the door. Envy stared after them with a slowly growing sense of dread.

_What are they planning now?_

_-_

There was a grunt and a thud as Susie attempted to open the door with a foot while juggling roughly a ton of thick textbooks. Envy stared at her curiously for a moment, mentally flicking through his repartee of put-downs for something suitable. Susie dropped them on his stomach.

"These," She announced tersely. "Are for you. We're going to start with Calid and work up from there, unless your even stupider then your hair looks, then we'll move to Magnus and go backwards. Questions?"

"WE?!" Envy spluttered.

This was apparently the wrong response because he was rewarded by another sound whack.

"Pay attention."

"To what?!"

"You," Susie explained in the slow flat tone reserved for toddlers, Pride and the exceptionally stupid. "Are learning alchemy."

"I am?!"

"Yes, you are." She replied in a voice that made it quite clear she was in some way related to The Aunts.

There was a significant pause. "And how do you intend to make me?"

Susie sighed in a long suffering manner. She put a particularly thick tome to one side and rummaged around in her back pockets. Envy's eyes widened.

"You wouldn't dare."

-


	7. In which Susie is inventive

In which Susie proves to be inventive and Pride seems to acquire some sense

Envy, while being far from a masochist, had lived through a fair amount in his time. Five hundred years was, after all, plenty of time to get killed in a variety of interesting ways. The incident with the water supply system of a certain mine, the chimera and the surprisingly flammable liquid had so far proved to be the most unusual. The oldest of Hohenheim's persisting children had survived rather a lot, actually, so should in theory have been able to put up with a mildly vengeful eleven year old and her electric shaver.

The shouting, sound of miscellaneous breakages and the growing pile of Envy's hair suggested otherwise.

It had begun surprisingly calmly, with some impressive contortion on Envy's part, swearing and a few 'lucky' hits that had scraped a handful of clumps free. Then, somehow, Envy had managed to get out of the restraints.

Fortunately for Susie there wasn't really the space in her Aunt's spare bedroom for a proper fight. Unfortunately for the furniture and the structural stability of the second floor there was plenty of room for the sort of scraping cat fight the siblings settled for.

Some short time after the third blow that made the entire house shake The Aunts decided to intervene and stalked upstairs leaving Pride in charge of the dinner.

The flashes of alchemic light, yelling, Richter scale shaking of the top floor and sad strands of long dark hair that were floating slowly out of the window did nothing to reassure the neighbours.

Pride sat quietly downstairs staring at the plates with their gradually cooling pork chops and green beans. Something was missing. A particularly vicious thud reminded him. Oh yes-they were upstairs. He got slowly to his feet picking up a plate and walked in a calm and rather thoughtful manner to the staircase. There was another flash of alchemic light and another round of back-lash made the building quake. Perhaps the banister was a good idea….

He paused just outside The Aunt's spare room. An onlooker would probably have guessed that this was due to the rather disturbing smell and the violent shaking of the floor. Pride had other things on his mind. There was something he had forgotten, a reason for stair-ways and banisters and the plate in his hand and the many varied possibilities in between. Someone slammed against the door-frame, sending the door crashing open and revealing a thoroughly devastated room within. Pride's eyes ratcheted into focus.

Oh yes, that was it.

He stepped into the fray, ducking and weaving through low flying feet, random outbursts of alchemy and a particularly vicious piece of shaving equipment. Being able to accurately predict movement, reactions and having a true genius' innate grasp of the mathematics of probability helped somewhat. However even Pride had his limits and remaining untouched within the middle of the current brawl for more than five minutes was one of them. With infinite precision he stuck out a foot.

The following five or so seconds were a bit of a blur which none of the combatants could accurately or satisfactorily account for later. The result however was that each of them somehow ended up winded in a corner of the room, facing the wall.

Envy and Susie scrambled round as one creature to have at each other again. Somehow they found Pride between them. Susie discovered that she was suddenly being held back by a firm hand on her forehead, while Envy noticed that he was similarly held at bay by a foot in his gut. Pride managed to look perfectly poised, balanced and controlled. The plate was perfectly intact.

"Get out of my way you idiot!" Envy yelled at him, having found that it was surprisingly difficult to get around his brother's well placed trainer.

Pride turned a sharply focused and horribly penetrating stare in Envy's direction. "No."

"WHAT?!"

"No," Pride began in a calm authoritative tone. "I will not get out of your way, brother. You are being ridiculous and you are acting like a child."

It possibly showed exactly how surprised Envy was at this sudden outburst of reason that the only thing he could think of to say was-

"But she _cut my hair!_"

A small smile crept over Pride's face. "It will grow back. You can make it grow back. Now sit down, be quiet and eat this."

There was a brief moment of shock while Envy stared dumbly at the plate in his hands. Then to everyone's surprise he did as he was told.

-

Pride, when in his right state of mind, apparently had a tranquilising effect on those around him. There was no other explanation for how Susie and her Aunts could have shuffled silently downstairs, eaten a cold dinner without complaint and not instantly reached for the nearest available weapon when Envy wandered down with his plate. He dropped it with a clatter on an end table, waking up Martha enough for her to produce the old pistol.

Pride was sitting at the table. He looked up at the noise, his head tilted to one side and his eyes half focused. Envy jumped into the chair opposite him. They stared at each other for a while, Envy frowned and Pride wore his usual mildly confused expression.

Then Pride's face broke into a wide grin. "Brother."

"Remember what I said about thinking and hurting yourself?"

Pride considered this for a moment and shook his head.

Envy sighed.

"Don't bother," Susie advised grumpily. "He's gone again-"

Envy waved a hand an inch or so in front of Pride's eyes, then tried clicking his fingers.

"It's pointless!" Susie snapped. "The last time he did that I spent two hours shouting at him and he just sat there."

"He does that." The homunculus agreed.

"It was weird. I was fighting him and then he just sat down and didn't move. He didn't even blink."

"Mmmm." Envy replied, flicking something at his younger brother.

"If you start another fight down here and damage anymore of my furniture, I will shoot you." Martha warned.

"It can't just be fighting," Agatha disagreed. "_He_ seems to be at least partially functional and capable of speech, even if most of it is nonsense-"

Susie shuffled over to the table and plonked herself next to Envy. They stared silently at Pride ignoring the Aunts' 'scientific debate' in the background.

"We could throw cold water over him." Susie suggested.

"I tried that."

"Didn't work?"

"Apparently he can't swim."

Susie sighed. Envy ran a hand through where his hair should have been.

"You got any games?" He asked suddenly.

"What?"

"Cards, dice, board games, snakes and ladders, anything?"

"Why?"

He glared at her. "Because the last two Prides could see chance. Do you have any damned dice?"

"Nope, Aunt Agatha can't abide board games."

"What kind of house doesn't have dice?" Envy muttered.

"We've got chess."

He groaned. _Of course, it would have to be chess. Bloody stupid game._

Five minutes later the two of them had set up a checker board, attempted to explain the rules to a non-responsive Pride and were continuing to tune out the Aunts.

"Knights don't move like that." Susie reminded Envy.

"I _know_." He snapped, putting the piece back and picking up a bishop instead.

"And if you do that you'll be in check-mate."

"This is a stupid game."

"You're only saying that because you lost-"

"I am not-"

"Twice."

"This isn't working." Envy growled.

"You're only saying that because-"

"I lost. Twice. I _know_."

"You could try the pawn-" Susie suggested helpfully.

Envy muttered something murderous and reached for the knight again but Pride batted his hand out of the way. Envy and Susie stared at him as he carefully picked a bishop and moved it across the board. Pride sat back while his siblings gapped.

"He's even worse then you!" Susie said taking the bishop with her queen.

Pride smiled a small contented smile and slowly slid one of Envy's pawns across the board. Susie spluttered. Envy grinned.

"That is not-"

"I win." Envy declared. "Want another go?"

"You have not won yet that is not check mate!"

He shrugged. "May as well be. Give up?"

"No!"

"How about now?"

"No! And it doesn't count because _he's_ helping you."

"He can't be, he's an idiot. Now are you giving up-"

"NO!" She glared at the board and whacked at a rook with her knight.

The homunculi both reached for the same piece and tried to move it in opposite directions. Envy glared at his brother who stared serenely back, but it was surprisingly hard to be truly angry with the kid and after the military, Flammel's bloody array, The Aunts and the incident with the razor he didn't have the energy. He let go of the piece and pushed his side of the board towards Pride.

"You play."

"You're obviously better than him anyway." Susie finished.

Envy kicked her.

"OW!"

"Are you two always going to do that?" Pride asked in a vaguely curious tone.

"Decided to re-join the rest of the thinking world then dope?"

"I-um-" He paused in the middle of putting down his chess piece and shut his eyes. "What did you say brother?"

"I told you this was pointless."

"Give him a bit more time." She prised the knight out of Pride's hand and passed it to Envy.

They played chess.

Envy lost three more games before Pride's eyes twitched into focus and began to follow the movement of the pieces across the board again. It was another two more loses before the younger homunculus spoke again.

"I think I might need something to focus on."

"No shit." Envy muttered.

"What's it like?" Susie asked.

Pride shrugged. "Everything's alwayschanging, everything. You should move that queen."

"Uh uh, you're not taking her side, she's winning."

"Perhaps I'm not." Pride suggested in a vague attempt to keep the peace. He shut his eyes. "It's-ummm-slipping-I think……Can you play quicker?"

"Told you dice would have been better." Envy muttered.

"Can't you focus on something else?" Susie suggested.

"But everything's-everything's…..it changes."

Envy sighed. _Think of something quick or I'm gonna end up playing chess all bloody night. Something that isn't chess…._He bit his lip. _A focus._ His mind wandered back through the centuries and latched onto the rhythm of a martial art sequence. _That must be almost five hundred years ago_.

The beat came back to him again almost instantly; it was hard to forget, a simple tattoo that wore its way into your head erasing everything else. 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3. His fingers drummed on the table top.

Pride's golden eyes shot into focus again. He smiled.

"Yes. That. That will do."

-


	8. The Radio Incident

In which the study of Alchemy is tested on radios

"That tapping is driving me crazy!"

"Oh stop complaining, Martha," Agatha snapped looking up from her book. "They're sitting, _studying_. There haven't been any fights, breakages, structural damage, complaints from the neighbours or alarms going off for the past _three hours_. Let them be."

"It's unnatural!" Martha continued. "They spent twenty solid hours either shouting at each other or hitting each other yesterday and _now_ they're-"

"Studying alchemy, reasonably quietly."

"It's just _wrong_-"

"Martha-"

"They're up to something-"

"You're being paranoid-"

They were interrupted by a sudden passionate outburst of swear words and the distinct sound of a textbook hitting a wall. Martha breathed out a sigh of relief and relaxed back into her chair. The natural order had been restored.

-

"Useless bloody-" Envy ranted for the umpteenth time. A particularly expansive frustrated hand gesture sent a small pile of carefully copied arrays fluttering through the air.

"Alchemy is NOT-" Susie protested, for perhaps the millionth time.

Pride tilted his head back to follow the flight of the notes. If he kept tapping constantly he could mostly keep track of what the other two were doing, although he was quickly coming to realise that this was not necessarily an improvement. His brother and sister seemed to be physically incapable of being in the same room without at least raising their voices at each other. So far in the course of the four days or so since the shaver incident, (which had officially been spent studying alchemy) there had been 73 fights, 116 miscellaneous breakages, and 389 shouting matches. Pride had been counting, when he was lucid enough to remember, there may have been more.

One of his eyes sparked into a lazy sort of half focus at a glimpse of one of the drifting arrays. His right arm shot out and plucked it from the air. He frowned at it for a moment. Then he turned it the right way up. Somewhere behind the piece of pristine A4 there came the sound of the 117th miscellaneous breakage, possibly a drawer, probably over Envy's head. Pride frowned at the array, placing it carefully on the table with a corner under one of the heavier textbooks so it wouldn't flutter away. Careful not to lose the beat he was tapping into the table he reached for a textbook. He was partially aware that Susie was shouting something. He suspected it was insulting.

Pride looked at the text book. He looked at the array. He put down the book. With an expression of infinite concentration he picked up a pencil and added three mechanically precise triangles at specific points. He examined his handy work critically for a moment, trying to focus on the beat. Then he beamed.

"Susie! Susie look! Look what I remembered!"

The oldest and youngest of Hohenheim's offspring disentangled and attempted to look as though they hadn't been scraping on the floor like five year olds.

"See?" The young homunculus continued waving his adjusted array with all the enthusiasm and pride of a toddler with their first drawing. "It fixes radios." He informed them.

"Great." Envy muttered rubbing at his jaw and wondering who had had the brilliant idea to link a homunculus' strength and regenerative abilities to the red stones they ingested and whether it was too late to make them suffer for it.

Susie was slightly more attentive. She frowned at the array. "I don't think that'll work, radio's work differently now Pride, they're more complicated-"

"It fixes radios." Pride insisted. "Al used it to fix radios-"

Envy sighed and snatched the paper.

"Hey!" Susie protested. She tried to get the array back and was prevented mostly by the fact that Envy's arms were far longer then hers.

"It'll work." He said.

"It won't!"

"It will."

"You don't know that!"

"I do, you haven't shut up about alchemy bloody theory for the past five days. It'll work."

"It will not!"

"You just don't want to admit you're wrong."

"Because I'm right!"

Envy grinned. "Ten cenz says you're not."

-

"They are gonna kill us." Susie muttered.

"No," Envy corrected. "They're going to kill _you_."

"What-what have you done?" Pride stuttered as the partners in crime hustled their way into the spare room and shut the door.

"Don't worry about it retard, you'll forget about it in ten minutes." Envy told him.

"And they _like_ you." Susie moaned. "They are gonna _kill-_"

"You, because I'm already dead. And _you_ suggested using _their_ radio," Envy pointed out putting the offending item down on a spot of cleared floor. He plucked a piece of chalk from Pride's hand and began to copy out the array.

"Only because _you_ wanted to break out and steal one!"

"It would have been safer!"

"Oh so you're _scared-"_

"I am NOT scared of them, _I_ don't have anything to worry about, they're going to kill _you-"_

"Stop saying that!"

"I only suggested it so _you_ wouldn't be in mortal danger-"

"Oh so now you're protecting me?" Susie asked sarcastically.

"From your Aunts." Envy continued with a rather worrying grin.

"That's bad-that-when he smiled like that." Pride informed Susie. "It means he's going to kill something."

"Oh so now we're back to death threats." She muttered.

"So can I smash this thing now or what?" Envy asked eagerly dusting chalk dust off his hands.

"Just for the record, when this doesn't work, neither of us know anything about a missing radio, we don't even know they had a radio, in fact you're not sure what a radio looks like and you help me get rid of the evidence. Deal?"

"Sure, fine, whatever. It will work, so you'd better have that ten cenz."

Envy's fist landed with considerable enthusiasm on a totally blameless and previously pristine radio. Pride blinked.

"Were you-um-planning to do…..ummm….doyourAuntsknowaboutthis?"

"If they ever find out I'll know who to blame." His brother assured him, standing up and stepping neatly out of Susie's way.

Pride would later, in moments of clarity, observe that this episode appeared to summarise their relationship quite well. Envy broke things into minute pieces, Susie attempted to fix them and in between they insulted each other, cursed like soldiers and threatened to kill anything that crossed their respective paths.

"I AM doing it right!" Susie yelled. "Look _who's _the _alchemist here!_ You can't even DO alchemy!"

"Well you don't have to be an _expert_ to know they usually put their _hands_ on the BLOODY ARRAY!"

"WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING?!"

"NOTHING AUNT AGATHA!" Susie swore, turning back to Envy and hissing. "Now _look _what you've done!"

"I've done?! You're the one who won't fix it!"

"Because the array doesn't work!"

"Because you're too thick to put your hands on the edge of a sodding circle!"

"I ummm think she might be….." Pride trailed off as his left eye suddenly took an interest in a woodlouse crawling across the carpet. There was something….something important……that sound it meant something…..oh yes.

"They're coming upstairs."

Agatha Hurst stood quietly outside the door of the spare room for three minutes. She noted the muffled swearing, mostly from _that boy_ but some unfortunately from Susie, the brief flash of alchemic light and the sounds of two children frantically trying to put a room back into a semblance of order. Then she walked in.

Susie and Envy were sitting cross legged on the floor apparently immersed in a pile of open text books and scattered arrays. Pride was staring intently at a patch of carpet. To complete the picture of adolescent innocence none of them bothered to look up.

'What have you done' was too obvious. Agatha opted for a subtler approach.

"Are you alright up here?"

Envy grunted what may have been a teenage approximation to an affirmative. Pride stared. Susie nodded, apparently absorbed in a particularly verbose study of arrays throughout history. Because of course nothing could possibly be wrong, they were sitting quietly studying and it was sheer coincidence and fluke that there hadn't been any fights or shouting matches for the past five hours. Agatha was not convinced. She nodded back and left the room, shutting the door gently behind her. There was a sound, which might have been mistaken for someone walking down the stairs, if you hadn't spent several hundred years involved in espionage.

Envy grinned across at Susie. His sign language was rather…inventive, but it didn't take a genius to interpret it. 'I told you so. You owe me ten cenz.'


	9. A very poor excuse

In which there is a very poor excuse

It would have happened sooner or later, it was as inevitable as equivalent exchange and as inescapable as the plague. If Pride had been in a focused state for long enough he would have realised this and taken appropriate preventative action. He was not. If Martha or Agatha had been in calm, rational and forgiving states of mind they would have worked it out before the situation reached crisis point. Having just dealt with their charge being inexplicably kidnapped, returned, a botched raid on military facilities and Envy they were not entirely attentive to the repercussions. Susie would not think in those terms for some time to come, and anyone who knew him doubted that Envy ever would.

As a result the day started in what now passed for normality.

"ALCHEMY IS NOT-"

"How do you know? You obviously don't have any talent-"

"THAT'S NOT-"

"Who couldn't fix the-"

"I DID FIX IT-"

"Only because you were using _his_ array, and I told you that you needed to put _both_ hands-And you still owe me ten cenz."

"WILL YOU SHUT UP!!! It won't even buy you a cup of coffee!"

"You're just sore because I'm obviously better at it then you-"

"YOU CAN'T EVEN DO ALCHEMY!!!"

"Exactly, that's why you're so sore." Envy told her with a smug smile.

"I AM NOT-"

"Will you two STOP bickering!" Martha snapped.

"Probably not, not while she's still pitching a hissy fit over there. I didn't know anyone's face could go that colour, it really can't be healthy……" He attempted to look innocent and did not precisely succeed.

Susie glared at him; mentally she tried to think through all the ways a vaguely human-shaped creature could be dismembered. She probably would have listed them if Agatha hadn't been quite so quick on the up-take.

"What did you break?"

The siblings turned to face her with identical expressions; badly faked 'affronted innocence' to cover guilt and absolute terror. Envy recovered first.

"She was just practicing a little….reconstructive…alchemy. She thought it would help us pick it up faster to, you know, see how the application of the Henson constant applied to calculating the Aufbau tangent in the case of simple transition metal constructs under an applied electromagnetic field-You don't look convinced I missed something didn't I?"

"The Henson constant only applies to organic matter, specifically plants, and only practically for three genus of trees and a species of daffodil. The Aufbau tangent breaks down in a system capable of conducting electricity, and I would never willingly let you near anything resembling a circuit. What did you break?"

There was a short silence.

"Ummmm you know we really need some more milk-" Susie began.

"Absolutely the bottle in the fridge has started growing cultures-" Envy agreed.

"They've reached the Renaissance period already-"

"Well ahead of their time-"

"So uh-for the sake of you know-"

"Continued health-"

"We should really be ummm-"

"Going."

They bumped into each other as they both tried to back out of the door at the same time. Agatha smiled.

"It's a little cruel," Martha observed. "Letting them stew over it like that."

"I liked that radio."

-

They made it half way through the corridor before they both started running for the door. They tumbled out into the garden, startling the dog, making him yap and race down the lane after them. When they had managed to put the satisfactory distance of three and a half fields between themselves and the Aunts they stopped to catch their breath, and began to blame each other.

"Milk? MILK?! What kind of excuse is THAT!"

"They let us go didn't they?" Susie panted. "And the radio was _your_ idea-"

"No it wasn't," Envy muttered. Somehow this was Elric's fault.

"_YOU_ said-"

"I _know_ what I said." Envy grumbled. "And you still owe me ten cenz-Where are you going?!"

"We're getting milk."

Envy considered this for a moment. "Well you can but I'm not sodding well going back in there. I'm leaving." He turned round dramatically and was faced with another field. As far as he could tell the only difference between this one and the one he was currently standing in was the presence of an abandoned Nisson hut.

Susie must have noticed the briefly dismayed expression on his face. She smiled. "You could go that way, if you kept on walking for, oh I don't know, a week, you might even reach a railway line."

Envy glared at her, but she continued before he could think of a suitably glib response. "And you wouldn't leave Pride behind."

"I would!" Envy protested instantly. "He's a useless retard! I don't need him! I don't need anybody! And he's a stupid, short, waste of red-stones. And I always have to get him out of trouble. And-stop looking at me like that! I-I could leave him behind if I wanted to!"

"Uh huh." Susie agreed rolling her eyes. "So you coming or what?"

He scowled. "Fine. But I'm not bloody carrying anything."

-

"You're a bastard." Susie told him struggling with the bag.

"So are you."

"I am _not_."

"Did he marry your mother?"

"That's not the-"

"Yes it is." Envy told her with that infuriating smirk. "Technically the only one who _isn't_ a bastard is Pride, and since he's a homunculus that's debatable."

"Are you _always_ so-"

"Yep. Usually."

"URGH!!!"

"You should probably try to stop doing that, if you hunch your shoulders anymore people will start tripping over you."

"STOP CALLING ME SHORT!!"

"I never said short….But now you mention it-"

"Go die in a hole."

"What kind of pathetic come back is that?"

"Shut up!"

To her surprise Envy did. She took a moment to let how truly odd that was sink in. She turned round to see him staring off towards the village centre.

"Are you OK?"

"I'm just wondering how quickly we can run back to your Aunt's place. You're meant to ask why by the way."

"Why?"

"Because the military use unmarked white vans like that for surveillance, and that dent in the side is to cover where they've patched the bullet holes." He turned his head a fraction towards her. "And I know you don't have much experience with this kid but the right response to _that_, is 'holy shit we're all going to fucking die.'"

"Are you joking?"

The homunculus didn't answer. Instead he spun quickly on his heel and raced down the lane. He would have liked nothing more than to take an entire battalion apart in the most creative ways his warped imagination could come up with, but without red stones… He settled for muttering a low stream of curses as he ran.

Dammit she's lagging-what's she want to see if she can get close enough to see their rank?!

"HEY!! Keep up short-arse!!"

"I AM NOT-"

-


	10. In which everything goes wrong at once

In which everything goes wrong at once

They rounded the corner at an impressive turn of speed. Envy vaulted over the fence, driving the dog into a noisy frenzy and barrelled into the back room.

"What on _earth?!"_ Agatha protested.

"They've found you." Envy replied flatly, already half way up the stairs.

He didn't stop to explain, or to listen to whatever it was she was shouting after him. He darted into the spare room. Pride glanced up from a scrawled array that seemed to turn into a stick figure half way down the page. His expression faded through happiness and confusion before Envy grabbed him.

"Brother?"

"No time for that," Envy snapped dragging him to his feet. "We're leaving."

"Leaving?…..But-but-"

"Or that, come on!" He tugged his younger brother out onto the landing towards the stairs.

"No! No-where….._Idon'twantto-_"

Pride dug his heels in and proved to be infuriatingly difficult to move. Envy snarled and kicked him, but it only made his brother whine louder. The constant litany set Envy's teeth on edge. He whacked Pride again. It didn't help. It never did.

Usually he'd spit and curse, then give up and leave Pride alone until he was in the mood to cooperate again. But they needed to leave _now_. Apart from anything else one miraculous, ill conceived, badly executed rescue was enough for one century. So he picked Pride up and headed for the landing. If he was struggling Envy didn't notice.

They almost ran into Martha on the stairs and as a result almost fell down them.

"What _are_ you-" She began.

"They tracked you back here." Envy interrupted, shoving past her. "We have to leave."

"And they are?" She demanded, entirely nonplussed.

"The _goddamned military_." Envy growled over his shoulder.

"Oh."

If he had taken the time to look over his shoulder he would have seen her turn very pale. But serious situations like this always distracted Envy from the simpler pleasures in life for a while. No red stones meant a lethal hit was _lethal_. After five hundred years Envy was rather in the habit of surviving.

_Why break the habit of several lifetimes?_

The car would have been the best way to run, but they'd be expecting that, they'd be _prepared_ for that. How far was it to the nearest station? They shot out the back door.

He pelted through the garden, driving the dog into a second fit of excitement, cleared the fence and made it about twelve metres down the lane before his brain managed to process the image in front of him.

_Oh hell……_

He spun on the balls of his feet and sprinted back towards the house. The pair in the lane continued walking at a leisurely pace, there was no need to hurry. They had all the time in the world.

_It just has to get worse-_

Envy burst back into house, dropping Pride and darting into the sitting room.

"Where's Susie?"

"Packing," Agatha replied calmly. "I thought you'd left."

"Change of plan!" He yelled from halfway up the stairs.

He made it to the landing just as the white van roared into the drive and more than half a dozen soldiers streamed out. He was in her room when he heard the front door crash inwards. Any minute they'd come upstairs. And she wasn't there. Which meant….

_Oh hell…_

He rushed across to look out over the back garden. _They_ were there, but he couldn't see her. She wasn't with them. Envy grimaced, he'd been through too much bloody trouble to let _him_ have-the soldiers were coming upstairs.

He transformed instinctively, even though it hurt, and he probably shouldn't have so near the window where _they_ would see the flash of alchemic light.

Two of the soldiers burst in to find a boy of about nine with messy black hair and big eyes. He looked terrified and was making all the right scared noises about them and his missing sister. But these men knew what they were looking for and they knew what it could do. The boy was hauled out at gun point and herded into the living room. Envy let them man handle him, wondering vaguely where he'd got this form from.

There were eight of them, two he instantly pegged as alchemists, and three of them might have been at the place they broke him out of. They had Agatha and Martha and by the sound of it they'd found Pride and he was still refusing to move. _Where was_-

The claws came from nowhere, slicing through the far wall like a razor blade on linen. About half a ton of rubble collapsed inwards throwing brick dust into the air. Everybody hit the floor.

_Oh hell_.

As serene as if she was walking into a ballroom the third Lust strode in through the gap she'd made in the wall.

-

She wasn't the prettiest; in Envy's humble opinion the second Lust had been the prettiest, not that it mattered when they were busy seeing how many pieces they could slice you into. The Aunts recovered quickly and alchemy lit up the room like lightening. As if on cue the military marksmen fumbled for pistols and gun retorts provided the thunder. Envy was not entirely sure whether they were shooting at Lust or the Aunts and strongly suspected that they weren't exactly discriminatory either way. Claws whipped through the room, catching people more by luck then design there was so much brick dust in the air. There was plenty of rubble lying about, he could have tried taking a few of them out in the cross fire. It wasn't as if anyone would notice the kid on the floor.

_Yeah because what this room really NEEDS is more projectiles flying through the air._

He scrambled onto all fours and scrabbled across the rubble towards Pride, or at least the room he'd dropped Pride in. It was only a few yards, and it wasn't as though Envy hadn't clambered over rubble with bullets whizzing past his ears before. The practice had in fact become something of a habit over the centuries; there was definitely a knack to it. He made it in minutes and was soon searching the wreckage for signs of life….or at least its alchemic equivalent.

_Also known as that stupid short retarded-is that a foot?_

He shoved a chunk of plaster to one side sending up another cloud of dust. He wondered if homunculus could choke to death and decided it would be a stupid way to die. He tried to tug Pride out but apparently the idiot still wasn't moving. Envy gritted his teeth and crawled up beside his brother. For a long time Envy glared at him trying to ignore the bangs and crashes from across the newly open-plan room, Pride gazed back, half focused. Then he smiled.

"Brother."

"You _still_ not moving you frickin retard?!" He hissed.

Pride slowly shook his head. "I-I-I wanttostayhere."

"They're _shooting_ at us." Envy pointed out.

"Ummm actually I umm think-Ithinkyou'll find….they're ummm shooting at uh…."

"_Nevermind._ We're leaving-"

"Why?"

"Because _he's_ here you stupid prick."

A rather blank frown. "Who?"

Envy valiantly repressed the urge to throttle his brother. _"Hohenheim you retard."_

"Oh……."

Brilliant just bloody-

"Have you seen Susie?" He asked, keeping the question direct and his voice clear, despite what it was doing to his blood pressure.

He'd expected stammering, or another blank stare. Pride's eyes flooded into focus.

"Fourteen to one outside, front drive."

Envy gaped. "What?"

"Odds of fourteen to one she-oursisterSusie-outside….on the front drive."

"How the hell did you work that out?"

But Pride had lapsed back into his own world of chance and floating brick dust and Envy didn't wait around for an answer.

-


	11. The voice in Envy's head turns traitor

In which Susie breaks machinery and the voices in Envy's head turn traitor

It would have been much easier to get to the front drive if the kitchen, hallway and sitting room hadn't been transmuted into a war zone. And Envy wasn't stupid enough to try the old keep-your-head-down-and-pray approach to crossfire. But he was damned if _that bastard _was getting to that frickin annoying _short_ alchemist-wanna-be first. He had survived _weeks_ of hostage keeping, been captured, stuck in a Flammel array, rescued, whacked, brow-beaten, tied up and _shaved_. That was far too much to let his leverage go so easily. And if _that retard_ didn't have the sense to get out of the god-damned way when people started shooting he deserved to get hit.

There was only one sensible option really, to go round from outside. There could be another truck full of soldiers out there of course but if there were they'd probably already got her. He could always circle back for Pride, get the two of them out of here and steal back that annoying little bitch once he'd got some red stones.

_So what are you waiting for?_

Of course there was also a good chance that _he_ was out there.

_Chicken._

The homunculus headed for the nearest window with a snarl. One of the voices in his head had clearly turned traitor. He added that to his mental tally of things that were somehow Elric's fault and vaulted out into the garden, narrowly missing an overgrown shrub.

This was stupid. He was weak, he could barely change form, he didn't have any handy weapons or backup and he was walking straight into a situation likely to contain in no particular order, sharp shooters, state alchemists, chimera, a new and powerful homunculus and _him_ of course. All for one more in a long string of pathetic _human_ bastards.

_Oh so you're gonna run away and let Him take her after all that huh? The little bitch CUT YOUR HAIR. Are you gonna let her get away with that? Are you gonna let HIM win so easy?_

That was more like it. Still, caution was called for in this particular situation. He flattened against the wall, changing to an adult male form he picked at random. He paused for a moment waiting for the pain to ease away. May be he should have given it a military uniform….then again they were looking for a shape shifter and they'd probably seen all the soldiers that'd come for the raid.

_You're stalling._

He eased along the wall. What had happened to the dog? The damn thing seemed to think it had a duty to yap at anything that moved but the only sounds he could hear were coming from inside. It was stupid the things you thought about when your life was in danger.

_Frickin typical if I die worrying about a damned dog._

He reached the corner and peeked round. Right, one white military van battered, one old banger no suspension, no chimera, no sign of _him_, no soldiers and no female midgets.

_Right, now what?_

_Go over and check, moron. Unless you're too scared?_

_I am NOT afraid of Him._

_Yeah right, pull the other one._

_Shut up!_

_Chicken!_

_Screw you!_

He broke cover, heading for the van.

He was pleasantly surprised when no one shot him. There were no ominous growls, no give away flashes of light, no swish of claws in the air. It was a bit of an anti climax really.

_Waitaminute….where's the driver?_

The front seats were horribly empty but the van was meant to be carrying personnel and there was always the back…….Where they usually kept the stock of weapons and ammo.

_Shit._

He glanced around quickly, there was no one in sight, the clamour of the battle of the living room was still strong enough to raise any dead in the vicinity not currently walking. The homunculus took a deep breath, surprise, the guy wouldn't be expecting it, it would all be fine.

_Yeah, right._

He pressed himself against the side of the van and started easing towards the back doors. Something grabbed his ankle.

And Envy, to his eternal shame, yelled loud enough to alert the military in South City, let alone the front room.

-

Susie wriggled out from under the van. "Well done moron! Why don't you scream a little louder then they'd be able to hear you in _North City too_!"

"I did _not_ scream you little-"

"Yeah you did. You think I was a soldier?"

"Shut up."

"Seriously how many soldiers hide under trucks?"

"Go soak your head."

Susie snorted. "So do you know how to hotwire this thing or not?"

"Is _that_ what you're trying to do?!"

"Well I was until you showed up-"

"You realise that's the gas tank right? The engine's up this end…"

"Shut up!"

"And you don't _have_ to hotwire it anyway-" Envy continued in what passed for patience coming from him.

"Oh so it's just going to _magically_ start is it?!"

"No." Envy stated calmly. He walked around to the back of the van, opened it up and pulled the unconscious soldier out.

"Generally the driver has a set of keys."

"I knew that!" Susie insisted, snatching them from him.

"Would you be able to see over the steering wheel?"

"STOP CALLING ME SHORT!!!!"

"And who's bringing the military down on our heads now pipsqueak?"

"They're blowing the kitchen up! They can't hear us!" She protested.

"Really so when you were complaining that I'd-"

"Screamed like a little girl? OW!"

"Can you even drive?"

"Can you? Anyway we have to go back in there-"

"No we don't-"

"To get my Aunts-"

"Those hags can take care of themselves-"

"And Pride-"

"If that retard is too stupid to-"

Susie stopped listening. Instead she dug into her pocket, quietly breaking off a piece of chalk. She kept her scowl carefully in place as she drew the array out on the side of the van. There was something satisfying about how far backwards Envy jumped when he saw the flash of light. It didn't last.

"WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST-WAS THAT A TIRE?! THAT HAD BETTER FRICKIN WELL NOT HAVE BEEN A WHEEL!!!!"

Susie smiled an irritating Elric smile. "You're not going anywhere without my say-so, and I'm not going anywhere without my Aunts-and Pride."

She sat cross legged in the dirt beside the van.

"YOU'RE WHAT?!"

"Oh come on, otherwise you'd just have hit me over the head and taken the damn keys right?"

Envy goggled, she was clearly smarter then she looked. "I wouldn't have-" He began

"Are you going to get them or what?"

The homunculus grabbed her arm and pulled her up, using far more strength then was strictly necessary. Muttering mutinously he dragged his sister back to the open window.

-

"So what's the plan?" Susie asked in a tone eager enough to be infuriating.

"The plan _was_ to get the hell out of here as quickly as possible. _Now_ the plan seems to be to become collateral damage in a three-way last-man-standing-wins brawl-you don't read westerns do you?"

"Nope. Why?"

"Then you won't be disappointed."

"So what's the plan?"

"You stay here-"

"WHAT?!"

"And I get them out. And if I get shot, sliced or transmuted into any state I don't want to be in _you suffer_ for as long as I can think of ways to make you." Envy snarled.

"Why can't I help?" Susie gripped.

He shrugged. "Because you're six, because you're short, because you're a girl, because you'd be useless in a fire-fight, because you broke the frickin car-take your pick."

"You're a bastard."

"So are you."

"An arrogant infuriating bastard. And I'm eleven."

"Whatever you say short-arse." He took a final glance around but the coast was clear and you could only put these things off for so long.

He leapt through the window.

It is amazing how quickly bullet holes and alchemic burns could change the atmosphere of a room. The focus of the battle seemed to have retreated to the dining room so Envy risked running to the opposite wall. He was pleasantly surprised to find he reached it without getting shot. Military marksmen had obviously gone downhill since the Elric-days.

Another rather large piece of the floor above had fallen on Pride, but he didn't appear to have noticed. He was happily contemplating what was left of the ceiling when Envy hauled him out. He didn't appear to notice when his brother slung him over his shoulder and pelted back across the room. Had he still been alive there would have been several loud complaints about being used as a human shield, as it was Pride did not so much as whimper when he was hurled through the window.

Susie may have commented when several kilos of alchemically animated flesh landed on her, but Envy didn't stick around to hear it. He dashed across the room ducking into the doorway for shelter. A quick glance into the next room revealed a good amount of Lust-induced rubble, so he ducked and skidded behind a decent pile of bricks.

_I really hope this wasn't a supporting wall-when was the last time I took cover behind a supporting wall?_

Someone was shouting what might have been an order, but it was drowned out by the crash of crockery.

_Oh yeah-that's why you don't take cover behind supporting walls…_

_You're stalling again._

_Shut up!_

_It's ONLY Lust!_

_EXACTLY-after last time she's gonna-_

_She probably doesn't even REMEMBER that, it was DECADES ago-_

_I'm gonna die._

_Chicken!_

He edged towards the kitchen, sticking close to the walls and convenient cover. A well- timed alchemic-outburst made the floor shake and almost floored him. The remaining walls at the back of the house faired far worse. A few more tonnes of bricks slid inwards making the dust billow upwards again.

For a long moment the world was a blurry brown, punctuated by gunshots, yells and flashes of light. Then Lust was running towards him, practically on top of him.

_Oh crap- _

She's probably not gonna recognise this form-

She skidded to halt and glared at him. "_You._"

_Oh crap-_

Well she probably doesn't remember about-

Her claws slid slowly outwards and she raised her hands-

_Oh crap-_

Envy ran.

-


	12. Introducing the Military

In which we introduce certain military personnel

The world was ringing and full of dust.

"What are your orders suh?"

Which meant that Piper at least was alright; it was hard to mistake that permanently unfazed tone for anyone else. He didn't wait for the ringing to go away.

"Report."

"It rabbited suh." She informed him.

The air settled enough for him to get a view of his team, all accounted for, mostly worse for wear and groaning. "Gloster?"

"Could have clipped her a few times," The skinny officer answered as he re-loaded his pistol. "But it's hard to tell for sure, what with-"

Yes, he was getting to that. "Harewood?"

"Sir?" The alchemist responded automatically scooping his dark hair out of his eyes.

"I'd appreciate it if you refrained from bringing the roof down on our heads quite so much in future. Is everyone alright?"

One by one there came six muttered affirmatives.

"Why did there _have_ to be two of them?" Kraus asked in a tone that suggested the homunculi had multiplied specifically to ruin his day.

The squad steeled themselves for the inevitable elaboration on this theme. First-Lieutenant Kraus opened his mouth to continue and was interrupted by a minor outburst of Xinese obscenities.

"Sir!" Macchi called, swearing again as he scrambled over what might once have been a work surface to kneel beside Whitley.

It only took a few seconds for Lt Colonel Lockheed to scrabble after him. He used the time to mentally curse every ranking officer who had insisted the girl be put on this team, because expert or not, Olivier course trained alchemist or not, she was a _researcher_ not a combatant and he _knew_ this was going to happen. It took him all of two seconds to realise it was serious, she was pale and blood was already seeping through the dishcloth Macchi had grabbed to press against her stomach. Lockheed closed his eyes.

"Kraus I want you to go to the van and radio for backup and a medical team."

"Sir?"

"_Now_ Lieutenant- Morane come over and help him, I want to know if we can move her. Gloster, watch those two." He straightened and skidded back down into the remains of the kitchen, why hadn't he thought to request a medical officer on this team?

"Should be fine sir," Morane replied almost instantly. "It looks like it's just her stomach-"

Which was the worst kind of wound. "Good. Harewood I want you to take her back to the van and have Junkers drive her back to South City-"

"Suh I think Gloster should go too, suh." Piper cut him off.

"I'm _fine_." Gloster insisted.

"He's got a hole in his leg suh." Piper informed her commander bluntly.

Lockheed sighed. "Harewood, take them back to the van and make sure both of them get to South City, and Major if I hear any complaints from you I'll have you court martialled for putting the entire squad in danger."

"Sir." Gloster acknowledged sullenly.

Piper stepped into his place, pistol raised and wavering between one prisoner and the other. Morane and Harewood were still improvising a comfortable way to carry Whitley when Kraus clambered back among the wreckage.

"Sir! The van's been attacked, sir."

It just got better and better- "Junkers?"

"Unconscious in the back, but it looks like some kind of alchemy's been used on it and-it's not going anywhere sir."

"Southern Command?"

"Say's they'll get here as soon as possible sir but there's been an accident on the road from-"

"Morane, get those two out of here. Harewood see if you can get the van fixed. Kraus-"

"Sir?"

"How long did they say they'd be?"

"About an hour."

Lockheed grimaced. Another hour with no back up, no where to retreat and three men down. Somewhere on the other side of the house another part of the floor above caved in with a crash, it reminded him that the homunculus, Lust Whitley had called her, wasn't going to stay occupied forever.

"Piper,"

"Suh."

"Stand down." He ordered.

She lowered her pistol, as if her commanding officer regularly ordered her to release prisoners on a whim. Macchi raised one dark eyebrow. Kraus could only have managed to look more surprised if it had started raining fish, flowers and exotic musical instruments. Lockheed eyed the prisoners cautiously.

"We have two homunculi to take in and we're two alchemists short." He summarised. "Since one of them at least didn't seem keen on you walking away from this I'd suggest that pooling our resources will make it more likely you'll live long enough to stand trial. If you'd rather not take the risk I'll have Kraus escort you back to our van and you can pray to whatever God you choose that our back up arrives before your homunculus bothers to check outside."

Agatha opened her mouth to object, probably along the lines that none of the bloody things were _hers_. Lockheed raised a hand to silence her and kept talking.

"If you try to run Piper will shoot you. If you cooperate I may be able to do something about those accusations of trespass and theft of military property. Do we have an understanding?"

"_Understanding?!"_ Martha began in an incensed tone.

"Of course we do." Agatha interrupted smoothly.

"Good, now which of you was it using that inventive take on a Klatchi rearrangement and what sort of range does it have?"

-

Envy ducked just quickly enough for Lust's claws to miss his head. God but she was fast and she'd learnt to keep him at a good distance. She kept her claws nice and long, spreading and closing her fingers. She moved with smooth easy flicks of her wrists and arms while he was being forced into more elaborate, unstable acrobatics just to avoid being cut in half.

Envy had good stamina and truly remarkable reflexes, the product of having spent almost five hundred years fighting. Which was also more than enough experience to know when someone was trying to back him into a corner.

But her claws were _everywhere_, even above him, so that just avoiding them was taking every scrap of energy he had left. She was just too fast; sooner or later she was going to get lucky. He needed to finish this, desperately.

He surged forwards, jumping over a claw that seemed to have been going for his knees and aiming a punch for her jaw. It never connected.

Lust's claws pulled back sharply, which even in his current over-taxed state Envy recognised as a _bad sign_. Then her hands came forwards and her two index fingers jabbed just under his collar bones. And kept going.

Her claws hit what remained of the wall, pinning him to the brickwork like a butterfly in a lepidopterist's box. God but she had good aim; she'd skewered him with her claws tearing their way out through the centre of the circles on his back, weak spots. He wasn't sure whether it was the pain or the last measly dregs of his power draining away that was making spots swim across his vision as though he was about to pass out.

She was walking closer, he noticed through the blur. The claws of her ring and middle fingers slid out to scratch over the side of his face.

_Crap, she's enjoying this…._

Envy was busy trying not to imagine what exactly she was going to do to him now, when he glimpsed a flash of light out of the corner of his eye, and the expression on Lust's face changed.

He didn't see the way the floor transformed into a quagmire or the way she sank past her ankles. Her claws were dragged downward, twisting further into his shoulder blades when the first bullet hit her. They cut deep as she fell, making his vision blur too much to make out any of the details. There was light. There was noise, loud shattering noise. Something blue moving…

Then the claws were wrenched out of his shoulders and he collapsed into a panting heap on the floor. He couldn't feel his arms past his elbows and everything above them burnt worse than a brand. He tried to push himself up sending a jolt of pain up along his arm into those agonising holes in his shoulders. He gradually unfolded and opened his eyes.

The world took an age to focus. When it did there was a pistol aimed at his forehead.

-

It was over surprisingly quickly. As soon as the earth had frozen around the creature's feet Kraus had shot her, four perfect shots to the head. One of Lockheed's arrays sliced the claws off her right hand as it whirled towards them and Macchi had tackled her before she hit the floor. The force jerked her remaining claw out of the other one's chest; he slid to the ground moaning. Piper had already positioned herself by the female's head and was shooting out a rhythm as she healed. The prisoner's Klatchi array sparked up again. The earth shifted. Lust sank; the floor froze in place around her. And just as the other one started to straighten up Kraus stepped up, gun at the ready.

It had all gone quite well actually. Then Kraus had to open his mouth.

"Put your hands up." He ordered.

The creature glared at him. "Screw you."

Kraus started to threaten it. Macchi tried to point out that the holes in its shoulders weren't healing so it probably couldn't even move its damned arms anyway. One of the prisoners interrupted by telling him to shut up.

Then an array flashed up from no where. The after-shock made the ground shake and the wall gave up the ghost.

As it collapsed, showering everyone with plaster all over again Lockheed couldn't help but think that it was one of _those_ days.

-


	13. The devil you know is for idiots

_Saint Jude is the patron of lost and hopeless causes._

In which the protagonists decide 'the devil you know' is for idiots.

_Oh God, oh God_-

He'd known it was going to happen, he tried to push the rubble off and-

_Shit that hurts-_

-like his entire back was on fire, like being roasted and stretched over a rack at the same time-

_-bugger I'm not-_

-wasn't healing. Just two big gaping holes through his shoulders wide enough to stick a finger through if he could get his hands to move-

_This is what it's like for them, it doesn't heal and it doesn't stop and-_

He heaved himself upright, biting back a scream as so much brick and mortar pressed against what was left of his shoulder blades. Then suddenly he was on his feet, so quickly he almost tumbled over again, the dust was everywhere and the light was too bright and-

_He's here. Oh God he's here_-

For a moment he couldn't move.

_-she used to say? One of the saints, what was his name?-_

The rest of them were still stunned, he'd probably missed the brunt of it because he'd been kneeling, but Lust at least was bound to wake up soon. He picked his way toward the nearest soldier wincing with every jarring, shuffling step.

_Saint Jude,-_

He couldn't feel his hands but he could see them. He tried to clench it into a fist and snarled when his fingers only curled. A couple of dozen quick repeats and he could pick things up, even if it burnt like buggery.

_-hope of the hopeless-_

The soldier, no the _colonel_, looked like he was coming round. Envy was quick. A swift kick flicked his gun from his holster into the air. He caught it, sending another set of shocks up his arm.

_Pray for me._

He ran outside.

-

It was brighter than it should have been. Every inch of his body felt thoroughly tenderised, which was depressingly normal but the flaring, throbbing hurt in his left ankle was a little worrying.

There was a shadow. Someone standing too close, tall and slim…..Piper? He squinted, forcing his eyes to focus through the plaster and…._Damnation._

He waved his arms ineffectually in an attempt to block its kick but the blow didn't land.

What was….

An empty holster clattered into his field of vision. He stared after it for an unnaturally stretched moment before his tired brain put two and two together.

Lockheed scrambled to his feet yelling something at the retreating homunculus. He staggered after it before common sense prevailed and he collapsed beside a pile of rubble to take stock. He spotted Macchi and one of the prisoners getting to their feet, Piper looked dazed but from what he could see she wasn't injured, Kraus… He pushed himself upright again and began searching the wreckage.

It didn't take long. Kraus had a tendency to complain and a predisposition to volume.

And suddenly they were all around him again in complete disarray, looking to him as if this mission hadn't been enough of a disaster already.

He turned to Piper. "First priority is the van, protect it, or if you can't get everyone who's injured evacuated before making any attempt to achieve the objective-"

"Suh-"

"Macchi, get those two," He waved at Kraus and the prisoner. "Further back, and see if you can find her sister. Don't engage the homunculus unless absolutely necessary."

From somewhere beyond the safety of the rubble came yells and gunfire. Screaming children.

Lockheed struggled to his feet and hobbled after the homunculus that had stolen his gun.

-

Pride curled into a ball and screwed his eyes shut. The world was an incessant whirl-wind of motion around him, spinning through all the could's and may be's until he couldn't think, couldn't breathe and all he wanted was for it to _stop_. But that was the problem; it was impossible to shut out the world. While everyone else on the planet had a barrier against the outside, a line in the sand between _me_ and _everything else,_ a little quiet space inside their head that was their own, Pride had nothing. And the roar of universe flooded in until all he could hear was the thousand different ways the wind could whistle, all he could feel was the millions of ways the ground could rock with each alchemic shockwave, all he could smell was the infinite mixtures of dust and air.

Think…….he had to try and think……something was happening……something important……something….

….there had been soldiers…..

_..dusty torn uniforms….._

……then they had moved…..Susie had moved him because…….because……something about…….

And then the dog had been barking and………

…someone….important…….Al?

And Susie had started yelling…..

….._No not Al……_

And he……him….Pride…..himself……..had done…….something……something when he could see because-because

_'tsee-_

And then………something…..and someone.…_brother.._..gunshots……lights….

_Where's Susie?_

-

Envy pelted outside with everything; the burning in his arms, the cold that was spreading from his shoulders as the last of his strength ebbed away, the raw hole that was forming in his stomach, fading into the background until there was only _him_. And the gun.

Hohenheim was only metres away, his back to Envy, walking steadily away because….._He_ hadn't heard, probably because whatever he'd done to collapse the walls had…..

_Why the walls_-

He stumbled as his foot caught against a trainer, the bastard was right there and he was gaining and……It took what seemed like an age for the appropriate cogs to turn.

_No, god no-_

He turned round so fast he almost fell over. He scrambled over the wreckage towards-it had to be Pride because there was no way Susie had legs that long and no military officer would wear running shoes.......

_Not again, please not again…._

Something inside him froze over.

_Get up._

_But he's….oh god he's-_

_He's a homunculus, he'll fricking live, GET UP._

_Oh god what if she's under there too?_

_HE'S GETTING AWAY-_

_Too late. I'm too fucking late, why am I always too fucking LATE?_

_HE did this! THAT BASTARD and if you don't fucking well GET UP OFF YOUR ASS NOW you might never get another chance! He's RIGHT THERE, and all you've got to do, all you have to do to make it all stop to make it all right again is GET UP and pull the fucking trigger! Well?! What the hell are you waiting for?! You haven't FORGOTTEN have you?!_

_No…..never…._

Everything hurt, and it took forever to get to back to his feet. And Hohenheim had turned around.

_Saint Jude……_

The muscles in his arm screamed, the gun felt as though it weighed more then a beached whale, his hand was shaking. But he got it wavering at shoulder height, which was when he realised that Hohenheim was carrying something-

_Someone-_

Envy snarled, his grip tightened over the trigger-

_Hope of the hopeless-_

Hohenheim shifted his daughter to his shoulder and clapped his hands.

-

Lockheed got there in time to see the shockwave floor the homunculus. Its body crumpled, as if it had been given a gentle push. The alchemist, one hand now supporting the child slung over his shoulder gave a small satisfied nod and turned round as though nothing had happened.

The sensible part of him, the part that carefully said all the right things to the right people, did the paper work and kept up with politics was screaming all the reasons why he should just let the alchemist walk away.

But he had a little girl slung over his shoulder.

He'd flattened the house behind him more thoroughly then a bomb strike. He'd knocked over a homunculus in passing as though it was nothing more then an irritation.

But he had a little girl slung over his shoulder. And whatever he wanted her for couldn't be good.

"HALT!"

The alchemist kept going. Lockheed ran after him, arm raised and ready with the array on his ring glowing.

"I'm a State Alchemist if you don't stop I'll-"

He moved fast. Whirling round before the words were fully out of Lockheed's mouth, his hands coming together and his cold concentrated gold eyes focused entirely on the Lt Colonel.

Which was when Envy managed to stagger back to his feet and fire.

The first shot went wide, but it was enough to break the alchemist's concentration. The second shot clipped the alchemist's shoulder and his hand went automatically to the wound.

The homunculus was yelling. The alchemist was backing away. Lockheed sent a few targeted jets of air towards him before the man recovered his senses enough to clap.

Hohenheim filled the air with smoke.

The creature kept screaming and firing into the cloud until he ran out of bullets. But the alchemist was gone long before it cleared.

-

The first thing that came to mind as the smoke spread out was that he couldn't see the homunculus anymore. Oh it was still there, he could hear it screaming blue murder, staggering and probably falling over the scattered rubble. Lockheed followed the sound, moving slowly and cautiously and cursing every higher ranking shmuck who had put him in this position.

"-Goddamned BASTARD SON OF A BITCH!!! I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!!!" The homunculus swore at the smoke, he was close enough to see its silhouette now; he raised his hand just in case.

He saw its legs buckle, watched it fold and collapse against a heap of bricks. How had that prisoner's Klatchi array worked? Did he have time to sketch one out quickly now that he was only a few feet away.

"I'll kill you," Envy whispered, "If it's the last thing I ever do."

Just a little closer....Lockheed stumbled over the wreckage, causing a minor landslide. The homunculus whirled round, faster then anything with holes that big in its chest had a right to. Lockheed found himself staring down the barrel of his own pistol.

They stared at each other. It, no he, was shaking Lockheed noticed. He was covered in plaster dust, tears streaming down his face, which was probably because of the smoke, and blood staining thick red lines from the holes in his shoulders all the way down to his thighs. It occurred to Lockheed that all he needed to do to disarm the creature was wait five minutes for its arms to give way.

He smiled. "You're out, boy."

When Envy's expression didn't change he took a step forward. Envy jerked the gun up at him.

"You're out," Lockheed repeated patiently. "It only takes six rounds."

He waited for the information to filter through.

"Your weapon's useless. You have two holes the size of golf balls in your shoulders and you are not healing. You could try to fight or run, but I highly doubt you'll get much further then our van on your own power. We have medical supplies. Unless you really want to bleed to death I suggest you come with me."

By the time Lockheed got to end of his little speech the creature looked utterly terrified. He dropped the gun with a clatter; his arms fell like dead weights. He glanced at something sticking out of the rubble then glared sullenly up at the colonel. Lockheed followed his gaze.

_Hellfire._

"Friend of yours?" He asked casually.

Envy's expression hardened, which Lockheed took as an affirmative. He sighed and stepped around the homunculus to get a better look. Whoever was under there would be quite thoroughly crushed, probably already dead but-

He rummaged briefly in his coat pocket, producing a penknife. He sank into a crouch beside the curious homunculus. It took him a moment to remember the array, but it was simple enough, more translating matter then transmuting it. The creature winced as he activated it and the array sparked into life. The wreckage opened up like a flower.

There was a boy in the middle, mangled but knitting back together as they watched.

Lockheed raised his hand ready to slice him in two when he attacked. But when the boy eventually uncurled and opened his eyes he just stared blankly into the clearing smoke.

"Run you idiot." Envy croaked.

Pride's face broke into a slow smile. "Brother!"

"_Run_ you _short_ retarded-"

He was cut off by two gunshots.

"Ah, Piper," Lockheed began, endeavouring to sound as though he'd planned this timely intervention. "Would you kindly escort these two gentlemen back to our van?"

-


End file.
